This Forbes article addresses one of the most important aspects of an interview – the communication style alignment between the hiring manager and the candidate. The article is written from the candidate’s perspective, but offers great insights into the hiring manager’s mindset.
A supervisor isn’t going to hire someone that he doesn’t believe he can work with. Managers come in all shapes and sizes–some are hands-off and expect their employees to do what they need to do with little or no supervision. Others like to receive daily updates, religiously review timecards and schedule regular check-in meetings with their staff.
This style topic is important in hiring, but should never be the deciding factor in a sales hire. The reason is this – one of the worst hiring mistakes is for the hiring manager to clone themselves in their hiring. The outcome of “clone hiring” is a team that shares the same communication approach in the marketplace and, more importantly, contains the same group weaknesses.
The strongest teams have a wide variety of communication styles to match the wide variety of prospects’ styles.